


The Tragedy Of Emily Katherine

by whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome



Series: Do What You Love And You'll Never Work A Day In Your Life [3]
Category: Letterkenny (TV)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Families of Choice, Found Family, Gen, I promise, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Original Character Death(s), Polyamory, i know it seems like a lot, nothing graphic, please just give it a go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-13 13:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16893333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome/pseuds/whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome
Summary: Séan Pádraig Brendan Connolly (2nd gen., Donegal) b. Letterkenny, ON. to Pádraig William Séaumas Ó Conghalaigh and Caitríona Éilís Bríd Sheehy-Skeffington of Letterkenny, co. Donegal, IREMáire Teresa Ní Mhurchú (1st gen., Derry) b. Derry, co. Derry to Cáitlín Máire Ní Mhurchú, father unknown*."Uncle Eddie” Eadbhárd Mícheál Cathal O'Higgins b. Derry, co. Derry to unknown. Raised in a Good Shepherd Sisters Laundry.Uaithne “Wayne” Ó Muirchú Connolly b. Letterkenny, ON. to Sean Pádraig Brendan Connolly and Máire Teresa Ní MhurchúCaitríona "Katy" Teresa Connolly b. Letterkenny, ON. to Sean Pádraig Brendan Connolly and Máire Teresa Ní MhurchúDaryl Thomas Boyd, b. Letterkenny, ON. to Emily Katherine Boyd, father not disclosed.*Barry MacBride, killed in Border Campaign, 1956 in Derry.





	The Tragedy Of Emily Katherine

**Author's Note:**

> Séan Pádraig Brendan Connolly (2nd gen., Donegal) b. Letterkenny, ON. to Pádraig William Séaumas Ó Conghalaigh and Caitríona Éilís Bríd Sheehy-Skeffington of Letterkenny, co. Donegal, IRE 
> 
> Máire Teresa Ní Mhurchú (1st gen., Derry) b. Derry, co. Derry to Cáitlín Máire Ní Mhurchú, father unknown*. 
> 
> "Uncle Eddie” Eadbhárd Mícheál Cathal O'Higgins b. Derry, co. Derry to unknown. Raised in a Good Shepherd Sisters Laundry. 
> 
> Uaithne “Wayne” Ó Muirchú Connolly b. Letterkenny, ON. to Sean Pádraig Brendan Connolly and Máire Teresa Ní Mhurchú 
> 
> Caitríona "Katy" Teresa Connolly b. Letterkenny, ON. to Sean Pádraig Brendan Connolly and Máire Teresa Ní Mhurchú 
> 
> Daryl Thomas Boyd, b. Letterkenny, ON. to Emily Katherine Boyd, father not disclosed. 
> 
> *Barry MacBride, killed in Border Campaign, 1956 in Derry.

Emily Katherine Boyd got knocked up when she was fourteen and a half. 

She had no choice in the matter. 

So, she ran away from her family, especially the man who took that choice from her, and wound up in Letterkenny. She got a job at the dollar store and rented a room from her boss. Squirrely Dan's Aunt Nancy is by way of being Letterkenny's informal paediatrician, emergency nurse, and about a hundred other jobs that need doing for folks except fer there’s no one official to do ‘em in the area, as well as being a registered midwife. She delivered Daryl on a mild late spring day and she was preoccupied by how young the girl was, so she kept an eye on her and helped her out when she could. 

She would invite Em over to eat and stay with her and Doreen, especially when Darry was first born. The girl had no one else. Nancy had lucked out with her large, understanding family, but Doreen knew what being on one’s own was like. So, Emily Katherine stayed with them for a while, but eventually she had to go back to work. Doreen would mind wee Daryl during the day and Nancy would keep up with him for an hour or two after work while Dreen taught dance classes, until Em came to get him and let Nancy twist her arm into staying for supper. The first time Emily Katherine called her Aunt Nancy forreal was like a balloon popping unexpectedly in the face; startling, but excitin’. She already had a fair few nieces and nephews, and the name Auntie was written into her bones, so adding another niece and a great-nephew to her hoard by weren’t no big deal. 

Nancy and Dreen loved having Em and wee Daryl stay over, which they did about once a week. Neither of them had ever particularly considered having children of their own, given their personal circumstances, and they enjoyed the abundance of Nancy’s family. But Emily Katherine and Darry were kinda special; a later blessing, unexpected and joyfully received, a connection all their own. Em ran from her family, hurt and betrayed on the most fundamental level, and found in Nancy and Dreen the love and protection that she should have had all along. 

When Em had a rough time right after Darry was born, Nancy and Doreen took no argument, they just put Em in bed in their spare room and took care of her and the baby, whatever it took. Em got better, slowly, and she loved Darry so she tried like hell. When the boy’s first birthday rolled around Em went a little nutty with the party considering Darry would never remember it, but it made her happy to celebrate her baby, so they indulged her and took about a hundred pictures. Watching Em, so excited and full of life, doing her best to make Darry’s birthday a joyous occasion, made it all the more difficult to see her stumble three months later, falling into the same sort of deep depression that she’d gone through when the baby was born. Once again, Nancy and Dreen pull her back to being okay, keeping an eye on her the while. When she goes through another bad patch a year later, Nancy does some maths and comes up with a crucial event nine months _before_ Darry’s birthday. 

Doreen and Nancy never pushed or prodded, they let her tell them in her own time. All they can do is be there for her, take care of her and her baby. They talk about it in euphemisms, plan out coping strategies, read up on trauma recovery. Doreen takes Em aside one day and asks if she wants to talk to a professional. She wouldn’t have to worry about costs, or who’s gonna watch Darry, or transport. Nan and Dreen will take care of all of it. Em says she’ll think about it, but it never comes up again, and neither Nancy nor Doreen want to push her away, so they keep _shtum._

Máire Teresa Ní Mhurchú meets Darry and his Mumma when the kids are taken to the principal's office for fightin' in the second week of Kindergarten and pert near decides on sight they’re now her people. If anyone has shit to say about it they’ll have to take it up with her hands, only no one ever would, 'cos Wayne got that shit from somewhere, and that somewhere was a 4'8" lady from Northern Ireland.

So Máire Teresa tells her Séan Pádraig what's the scoop and she buys a neat little double-wide with two bedrooms and puts it on a small lot adjacent to the farm that Séan Pádraig inherited from his Da Pádraig. Then she enjoys a polite Tea with Emily Katherine and offers to let her stay in it 'cos her landlord is charging way too much for a single room and this poor child makes pennies working at the dollar store. Máire Teresa also offers her a part-time gig helping around the farm so she can earn extra cash in addition to her regular job and they can both keep an eye on the weans. 

There’s no mystery about what happened to Emily Katherine. Máire Teresa puts the pieces together in about a week. It's not polite to pry, so she doesn’t ask, but. She drops a few hints that she’s guessed and Emily Katherine, on the advice of her Aunts, opens up to Máire Teresa about how she fell pregnant with Darry. Talking about it is difficult, and Em has a rough time of it for a week or two, but Máire Teresa and the Aunts see her through, and _yawannaknowhat_ she does feel better after. 

Máire Teresa and Emily Katherine are inseparable in no time. Emily’s a bit fragile sometimes, skittish around men she doesn’t know if she’s alone, and yet still naive in the oddest ways. She’s perfectly intelligent, she just has these unexpected gaps in her education, like believing that Unicorns were real once upon a time, but they went extinct. Máire Teresa and Séan Pádraig shared a Look upon finding out that fact and very gently held her hands and explained, no, _a ghrá, a chroí,_ that was just a song. Máire Teresa is fiercely protective of Em and will stand between her and the world if Em needs her to. Em looks up to Máire Teresa (not literally) and basically thinks she hung the moon. Emily Katherine takes longer to warm up to Séan Pádraig, but once she does they’re thick as thieves. It helps that he’s the _gentlest_ man she’s ever known; calm and easy and slow, no sudden movements, soft spoken and more than willing to allow her to dictate the terms of engagement. 

Emily Katherine is by nature a tactile person. She has to touch something to figure it out sometimes. In conversation, her hands are always moving, reaching out for connection. With the kids, anytime they’re within an arm’s length they’re subject to hugs and kisses and cuddles. Katy and Darry thrive under the attention, soaking it up like plants in the sunshine. Even Wayne tolerates it, and will on occasion seek it out when he’s feeling raw from the rest of the world rubbing him the wrong way. Em has a soothing way about her, a gentleness that nothing can touch or disrupt or turn sour. When the kids are sick or fussy, it’s Mumma they want, who will carry them around on her hip all day and hum sweet and soft until they fall asleep.

Em and Máire touch all the time, always kissin’ and huggin’. When Máire Teresa is cooking, Em will come up behind her and wrap her arms around her waist. If they’re sitting on the couch they’re cuddling. They hold hands and walk with their arms around each other, rest their heads together and whisper in each other’s ears. They’re so sweet, there’s a sudden outbreak of cavities in the area. 

Eventually, even Séan Pádraig’s not exempt from Em’s affections, though they’re not as intimate as Máire Teresa and Em are. But still, it’s not an unusual sight around the farm or in town to see Séan Pádraig and Em walking around arm-in-arm or hand-in-hand, or having a dance at the Jamboree, or herding their riotous collection of children at some event or another. He opens doors for her and hands her down out of the truck or off the porch, carries the bags of shopping, walks on the outside of the pavement, and is generally a gallant and a swell. 

After the first year, most of the time, the trailer is empty. Em and Darry stay up at the farmhouse, Darry in with Wayne and Katy, and Em with Máire Teresa. Sometimes Séan Pádraig will join them, but mostly he’s content to have a bed of his own. For a tiny wee slip of a thing, Máire Teresa has a knack for taking up the whole bed, leading to knees and elbows being jammed into uncomfortable places. Bless Emily Katherine for putting up with it, says he. If she can sleep through that, let her. 

The trailer ends up becoming more of a Retreat of sorts. Sometimes one of them will just need some Time to Themselfs, so they’ll stay a night or two and then head back up to the farmhouse in the morning for chorin’ and breakfast, getting the kids ready for school, all that. It works like a steam valve on a pressure cooker. They all love their family, all of it, but sometimes a body really just needs to be able to hear no one but themselfs. So, they all take turns when and as they need. Séan Pádraig goes at least once a month, Máire Teresa every couple of months, and Emily Katherine the least frequent of all, but for longer at a stretch. 

It’s always around the same time of year when Em goes down to the trailer, about three months after Darry’s birthday. Sometimes she’ll go and stay with Aunt Nancy and Aunt Doreen, and Máire Teresa worries less about that. They all take care of her as best they can. Occasionally Em won’t feel well enough to come up to the house, so Máire Teresa checks on her to see if she needs anything. She and Séan Pádraig ask if Emily Katherine’s ever gotten any professional help, and would she like some? Em says she’ll think about it. None of them want to fight about it, so they let the matter lie and focus on loving each other as best they can. 

Their family is unusual, to say the least. Three parents, three kids, and enough love for all of ‘em to go around twice. Sometimes folk in town forget their manners and then Uncle Eddie, or Séan Pádraig, or hell even McMurray (now Senior) will have to straighten them out. Bad gas travels real fast in a small town. Best not to say nothin’ a’tall. Local rumour mill aside though, they’re all _happy,_ and maybe that’s what really grinds people’s gears. 

The only fly in the ointment is that Emily Katherine does have these funny turns sometimes. She won't leave the bed, she cries, she drinks a bit too much. She goes for days without speaking or eating, or making an appearance at the dinner table. Though Séan Pádraig and Máire Teresa try to help and try to get her help, she always refuses, says it'll pass. She does do better off and on, for years, but then a little while after Darry turns 15, Em doesn't show up one mornin' to help with the chorin'.

Máire Teresa goes down to the trailer to check and see if she's okay. She finds towels and blankets rolled up and stuffed in under the sashes of windows and around the doors, like she was trying to keep the draught out in the dead of winter even though it’s full summer outside. Em laid herself out on the bed in her best Sunday dress, a note that just says "I'm sorry," folded in her hands. She looks like she's sleeping. Máire Teresa knows from a dead body. Emily Katherine’s been down there all night and all the gas taps were open full whack. It’s not the first time she’s seen it. Not being given much to hysterics, Máire turns off the gas, calls the police non-emergency number, opens all the windows, and sits on the steps and cries for the first time since she left her own Ma back on the docks, and she thanks a God she doesn't quite believe in one of the kids hadn’t found her.

Then she calls her Séan Pádraig and tells him to keep the kids home from school. A social worker shows up for Darry and Máire Teresa fights that shit tooth and nail, because the very idea of Darry going to live among strangers makes her feel like they're tearing her babe from her breast. She has loved this boy and his Mumma (God rest her soul) for a decade now and she'll be _damned_ if anyone is going to take him away from her.

After a couple of interviews (thank fuckin’ Christ for Uncle Eddie and Aunt Nancy,) the social worker comes back with Official-type paperwork and when the dust settles, Daryl is Máire Teresa and Séan Pádraig’s son in the eyes of the Law a whole ten years after he was in their hearts. 

The kids all take it hard, each in their own way. Wayne is absolutely _furious_ with every damn little thing, his already short temper cut down to the quick. He clams up, refuses to speak for the possibility that he’ll start yellin’ and not never be able to stop, and he spends every second God gives him either working himself to the bone or getting in fights, it don’t much matter which. He won’t let nobody but Katy or Aunt Nancy touch him, and even then Aunt Nancy is on sufferance only ‘cos she’s got spooky Aunt Powers and also she’s the one teaching Katy how to doctor him up. 

Katy gets clingy with all of them, which was unexpected, because normally she’s as aloof as one of the barn cats. She hugs them longer, insists on knowing where they are all the time, when they come and go. She makes a point of checking in with them, saying good morning and goodnight, hello and goodbye. If she’s leaving, or someone else in the family is she won’t let go until she gets a hug and a kiss and an estimated time of return. She gets nervous and snappish if someone’s late. She starts hanging out at the kitchen table instead of in their rooms, just so she can be around more people. 

Darry withdraws into himself so hard he’s like a startled turtle ducking into its shell. He spends a lot of time following Ma around, not the way Katy does, but more like he’s waiting for something. For the time to be right, maybe. He stares off into the middle distance, caught up in his own thoughts, trying to tease out some sense from what’s happened. The puir babe hasn’t yet figured out that there’s never really a logic to these things. People make choices. Stuff happens. There doesn’t have to be a reason. 

About a month after they bury Emily Katherine, the child breaks Máire Teresa’s heart into a million shards. Out of the blue, just him sitting at the table and her in the kitchen, he asks, _Why weren’t we enough?_

All the air rushes out of the room, like an airlock being opened on a sci-fi show. Hard vacuum fills her chest and for a black moment, she’s pure ragin’ at Em. For leaving her here, leaving their children, for making her son doubt himself like this. Shaking hands set down their task and she marches over to Daryl, slides her fingers into his hair to take a fistful on either side of his head and tilts his face to look directly at her. 

She calls him _Sweetheart,_ says what Mumma did has _nothing_ to do with him, or her, or anyone else. Mumma was ill, she was hurting, and it hurt so much she thought there was no other way out. It had nothing to do with how much she loved any of them and she loved them more than anything else in the world. It’s not fair, they _should_ have been enough, but sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you fight, or how hard you love, some battles just can’t be won. There’s no justice in the world, there’s just us. So they have to do the best they can, be the best they can, ‘cos if nothing matters, then all that matters is what they do, the choices they make, the way they treat others. 

Darry’s eyes fill up and he confesses in a whisper: he feels guilty because he’s angry with her for choosing to die, for not trying hard enough, for not taking the help that was offered. It didn’t have to be like this. 

Máire Teresa lays her brow against his, stroking his temples with her thumbs. Darry has always been the best of her and Em combined, as though he’d been born to the both of them. At her quiet, _Me too,_ he huffs and wraps his arms around her, turning his head to lay it on her shoulder, so she lays one arm across his back as she cradles his head against her. Maybe because he came into their lives years after Wayne and Katy, Máire Teresa doted on him as though he was the baby of the family, for all that he was almost a month older than Wayne. He had a special place in her heart; not that she loved him more than her other two babies, but she and Séan Pádraig tried for a long time to have more children, and had only months before, grieving and reluctant, given up that dream when they met Daryl and Emily Katherine. 

Máire Teresa held no illusions about the Church, having been on the receiving end of people’s _piety_ back home. Her own unwed mother was unacceptable to the Church, and being a child born out of wedlock hadn’t done Máire Teresa any favours. Uncle Eddie hadn’t _exactly_ told her about the horrors of being raised in a Laundry, but he’d let slip a handful of details about his childhood that convinced her those nuns were never doing the Lord’s work. For all that though, she could never completely shake the niggling _what if_ in the back of her mind. So, when Darry and Em joined their family, she’d felt in her heart they were a gift from God, as if to make up for not being able to carry another babe herself. 

When he was small, he’d been terribly shy. Em hadn’t socialised much outside of Aunt Nancy and Aunt Doreen, being so young and having a babe to look after. But the very next day when Máire Teresa went to pick up the twins from Kindergarten, he ran over to her and threw his little baby arms around her and begged Aunt Nancy to let him go home and play with Wayne and Katy. From that moment he’d been her third child, a beautiful surprise she’d never dared hope for. 

Right now, she can feel the memory of his stick-thin arms holding her then just as she feels his mostly-grown self holding her now. Her baby. Neither of them is much given to crying, but there are a couple sniffles. Máire Teresa kisses his mess of curls, _Dáithí, a mhic, a cuisle,_ and suggests a cup of tea will set them both right. Neither makes a move for a couple of minutes, and eventually she clicks the kettle on and Darry stands behind her with his chin on her head like Em used to do while she gets the tea things ready. With a wink and a finger on the side of her nose, Máire Teresa pours a wee splash of Irish whiskey in each of their cups, just a thimble full, ‘cos she’s tiny and still has chorin’ to do, and Darry’s not used to it. 

They toast Emily Katherine and sip their tea, and the only thing to break the silence is Daryl’s quiet, _Love you, Ma._ She takes his hand on the table and they finish their tea together. 


End file.
